Walk explores privilege

Macey Spensley, [email protected]

January 28, 2016

Volunteers participate in The Privilege Walk at the College of Public Health Building on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. The Privilege Walk was an interactive exercise and discussion targeted around acknowledging different people’s life experiences and privilege. (The Daily Iowan/Courtney Hawkins)

One group aimed to highlight social issues that people deal with every day.

As part of Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Week, members of the diversity committee at the University of Iowa College of Public Health hosted a Privilege Walk Wednesday.

The event was held to address issues of privilege and oppression in society.

“People had a better understanding of privilege and barriers,” said Tanya Uden-Holman, a member of the Diversity Committee. “They thought about different types of barriers besides race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and religion.”

This was the second event that the committee put on for the King Celebration Week. Their other event was a showing of a movie by Tim Wise, an anti-racism activist.

Katie Boland, a diversity committee member, said the college holds events for King Celebration Week every year.

“We thought the event was visual and impactful and could start a dialogue,” she said.

Boland said she hopes the event would be able to highlight different forms of societal privilege and disadvantages that people had.

The walk had people of different ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientation, and class hold hands while moving forward and backward to indicate the different levels of privileges that they each had.

During the event, participants had to move forward or backward if questions that were posed applied to them.

There were 35 questions in all. One included, “If you can walk at night without fear of being sexually assaulted, take a step forward.” After the 35 questions were answered, each participant was standing at different points on the floor, ahead and behind each other.

“I recognized my privilege as a white man,” said Michael Anderson, who is studying at the UI College of Public Health.

Anderson added that he learned to never make assumptions about people.

Chelsea Hicks, a member of the Diversity Committee, said she was surprised that she had that much privileges because she was farther back in the line among the participants.

There was a discussion following the main event. Audience members discussed their thoughts and feelings about privilege, and what surprised them about the Privilege Walk.

Wilson added that she believes the UI should have more similar events.